You-jeong Jeong - The Good Son

I was ready. I had trained intensively. I was physically at the top of my game, as I’d stopped taking my meds a few days earlier. I knew I’d go to Doha. I came in first in the 800-metre qualifiers. The stadium murmured: I hadn’t appeared in the rankings. Instead, ‘DSQ’ flashed next to my name. Disqualified. Apparently my leg had moved before the pistol went off; it was a false start. I didn’t realise I’d been disqualified until after the race was over. I didn’t even realise that I’d moved my leg.

The next day, as I waited for the 1,500-metre qualifiers to begin, I broke out in a cold sweat and a heavy weight sloshed in my belly. But I couldn’t have an upset stomach; I hadn’t eaten a thing. I figured I was in shock at being disqualified the day before. I tried to forget the nightmare of the 800 metres. I counted, listened to music, focused on the race ahead. The stadium was filled with a metallic smell, but I attributed it to the sweaty crowd in the stands rather than an oncoming seizure.

A short whistle. I took a deep breath. A long whistle. I stepped onto the starting block. ‘On your marks.’ I crouched and bent over. I hooked my hands over the edge of the starting block and raised my eyes to look at the water. There was a hole there. It was like a sink drain. Black water was swirling violently around it, spinning like a storm, the hole widening. The drain became a sewer, then it grew to a manhole, and then a sinkhole big enough to swallow a car. The lane dividers twisted and writhed like enormous pythons; my lane grew wider. A metallic smell surged up from the water.

This isn’t real , my mind reassured me. You’re seeing things because you’re not feeling great. Don’t be scared. I turned to look behind me to find that the entire stadium had become a huge maelstrom: the people in the stands had vanished, and spinning black shapes swirled around the outer edges. Maybe this was what it would feel like if you were in a racing car whizzing around an arena. My gut flipped and surged up my throat, just as the starter pistol went off.

I threw myself into the middle of the black whirl of water. I surfaced and began to swim, but my body refused to go forward. I was circling the edge of the swirling water, as though I were going down a plughole. I began gasping. My body careened from left to right, and I thought I would flip over and be sucked in. I couldn’t rip my eyes away from the giant dark void at the bottom of the whirlpool. I flailed for something to grab on to. I couldn’t breathe.

I realised what was happening. I’d understood its possibility intellectually but I’d never experienced it before. This was the precursor to a seizure. I’d brought this disaster on myself. Fate always lurked; there might be times when it looked the other way, but that couldn’t happen more than once or twice. Things that were supposed to happen did happen and things that were supposed to come around did come around. Fate had sent an assassin, deciding at this very moment to carry out my sentence. It was only the most important moment of my life, and it was about to end in the cruellest way possible.

I could either resist to the end and fall into the enormous void, or get out now and run away. I chose the latter. My hand grazed the touchpad. I grabbed it and came to an abrupt stop. I leapt out of the water, threw off my cap and goggles and left the pool. My coach was yelling at me, but I didn’t look back. Honestly, I didn’t have the energy or the time. Everything started to get darker. I could imagine myself with my eyes rolled back in my head, foaming at the mouth, twisting and curling. I had to go somewhere before that happened in front of all these people. I didn’t think. I didn’t know where I was going. My feet led the way and I managed to cover some distance. When the moment arrived, it was as if a bomb had gone off inside me. Everything turned white, like a snowy field, and the circuits in my brain stopped firing.

Mother told me later that she found me asleep in a corner of the underground car park, snoring and covered in sweat. She put me in the car as soon as I woke up, and slipped out of that place without telling anyone. Five hours later, I arrived at Auntie’s clinic. Instead of explaining to my coach what had happened and trying to figure out what to do, I sat in front of Auntie as she interrogated me about the reason I had stopped taking my meds.

Nobody found out that I was an epileptic who’d had an episode during the race. I was disqualified and wasn’t eligible to enter the next race. And of course, I was out of the running for Doha. My coaches were pissed off. My name was plastered all over the local media; the cameras that were circling the pool had nationally televised the insane kid who’d run away in the middle of a race. The fact that he had been a rising star who’d come out of nowhere made it even more newsworthy.

None of this meant I would have to give up swimming; if I had talked frankly with my coaches, they would have been compassionate and given me another chance. That was what I wanted to do. I wasn’t afraid of telling them about my epilepsy; any embarrassment would last merely a moment, and swimming was everything. I wanted to speed through the water again. I was ready to be honest. Even if I had to live for the rest of my life shackled and restrained by Remotrol, I was confident that I would never complain.

I was sure that Mother would agree. She had dedicated herself to supporting my ambitions. She knew how rigorously I’d trained. She knew more than anyone else the importance of swimming in my life. But I had overestimated her. She dredged up the promise I’d made when I first began swimming, and told me I was done. She said she’d made her decision when she drove me out of the car park. She acted as though she’d been waiting for something like this all along.

Nothing worked. No excuses, no pleas; I knelt in front of her, weeping, protesting, asking if she was that embarrassed that I was epileptic. I threatened to leave school. I staged a hunger strike until I collapsed. My coach came over after he received notice from Mother that I was quitting, but he was sent away at the door. She didn’t budge, not even when her beloved Hae-jin spoke up for me. She was a woman of steel, unmoved by anything, resolute and constant.

I even went to see Auntie on my own for the first time ever. All I had was epilepsy; I wasn’t going to keel over and die if I swam past the age of fifteen. This was beyond unfair. Auntie listened to me with a smile on her face. I know, she said. So why did you stop taking your meds?

There are some people you just can’t love. Even when they smile, they make you want to pull on either side of that smile and rip their mouth off. I scratched at my knees, my forefinger twitching, and pulled out my ace card. I asked her not to tell Mother, and confessed to it all. It was the first time I’d told anyone why I had stopped taking my pills. For the first time ever, I spoke honestly about myself, my dreams, why I had to swim, my desire not to be defined by my epilepsy. I beseeched her to talk to Mother for me.

The following morning, Mother called me to the living room. I’d never felt so nervous. I sat in front of her, my eyelids trembling as I looked down at my palms, which were damp with sweat.

‘As long as you keep swimming, there’s always the possibility that you might have a seizure in the water.’ Her voice was gentle but firm.

The world spun around me. That won’t happen, I wanted to say, but my mouth was glued shut.

‘Someone who’s already crossed a line will cross it again. You know what’s on the other side, so you’ll stop taking your pills again and again. You know that you’ll feel so much more agile and that you can set records.’